MVC Race – Are You Kidding Me?

Eight Teams Tied for First Place

(St. Louis, MO) – The Missouri Valley Conference mantra ‘The Valley Runs Deep’ has never been more true. Are you kidding me? Eight teams are tied for second place, and all eight are only one game out of first place!

This is the most chaotic beginning to a conference season in my history of watching the league. There have been so many story lines and trends that abruptly end and then head the opposite direction.

We Know Nothing!

We all know the tried and true axiom, ‘it’s hard to win on the road in the Valley’. That may be true, but this year, visiting teams are winning with regularity. Two more road teams claimed victory Wednesday night, making it three of six in this mid-week round of games and fourteen of the thirty conference games have been won by the visitors.

Bradley has been playing very well and Drake was scuffling, so of course the Braves would win a home game between the two and truly separate themselves from the rest of the league. Since Drake rarely uses its bench and Bradley is a deep team, the Braves would be able to wear down the ‘thin’ Bulldogs.

So what happened? Drake’s bench scored 44 points, their defense suffocated the nation’s best three-point shooting team and the Bulldogs prevailed 64-57. They accomplished this feat with the Valley’s leading scorer, Bennett Stirtz scoring just four points, all from the free throw line.

Are You Kidding Me?

Murray State was scuffling and struggling to finish games when it began its ‘Iowa Road Trip’. The Racers had lost five of their last six games, but found a way to knock off Drake last weekend. Conventional wisdom found that gaining a split in Iowa would be a great feat and on a short scouting situation, the Racers would come home feeling ‘OK’.

Instead, Murray knocked off the Panthers, with Terence Harcum making some big shots in ‘crunch time’, just like he did against Drake. Suddenly Steve Prohm’s team, which many were ‘leaving for dead’, has won two-straight and three of their last four games. Like seven other teams, the Racers are 3-2 in Valley play.

What Happened to Easy Wins?

Illinois State had won two straight games and six of its last seven games. Most recently they had drilled Southern Illinois by 31 points. As healthy as they’ve been all season, the odds of them losing at Evansville weren’t high.

Oh, remember Evansville? The Purple Aces were picked ninth in the preseason poll and sure, they had defeated the two Valley teams with no conference wins (Missouri State and SIU), but before that, David Ragland’s team had lost five straight.

This would be an easy win for the Redbirds. Except the Purple Aces handed Illinois State a 18-point defeat. UE’s defense held the high-scoring Redbirds to 51 points and held the league’s second best three-point shooting team to twenty-nine percent from deep.

Suddenly, the Aces have won three of their last four games, and you guessed it, they are three-and two in Valley play. Point guard Tayshawn Comer has turned into a scoring machine, netting 69 points during the last three games.

Valparaiso was picked tenth in that same poll, and coming into league play, the Beacons had recorded a significant losing streak against virtually every other Valley team. Six straight to Belmont, Bradley, Drake and SIU. Nine in-a-row to Missouri State. They had dropped four consecutive contests to Indiana State, Murray State and Northern Iowa.

After falling to both Drake and Bradley in narrow fashions, they have run off three straight victories over the Bears, the Panthers and Wednesday night over Indiana State. The high-scoring Sycamores still scored plenty, but three Beacons eclipsed the twenty-point mark and Valpo’s home 98-95 victory leaves both teams 3-2.

By-the-way, Indiana State’s two league losses have come by one point to Bradley and three on Wednesday to the Beacons.

Even Belmont’s Wednesday win over SIU, while not surprising, was eventful. The Bruins led by 12 at the half, but were missing two, key rotational players to illness and SIU blasted Belmont for 55 second half points, and made what looked to be an easy win, into a nail-biter.

SIU’s Ali Bibba scored 33 in defeat.

Every Game a Big Game

Saturday’s games are all big. Belmont travels to Indiana State where we could rightly expect both teams to score in the nineties if not triple digits. Are you kidding me? The way this season is going, probably neither team will hit seventy!

Bradley travels to the hottest team in the league the UIC Flames. Rob Ehsan’s team has won six of its last seven games.

When Valpo visits Murray State and Illinois State entertains Northern Iowa, all four teams come in 3-2. It’s all great theatre. Even Southern Illinois’ home matchup with Missouri State is big. Both teams are winless in five MVC contests. Someone is going to get their first one and could spark a positive surge.

Through 30 conference games, twenty-one of them have been decided by ten or fewer points and eleven by five or less. While Indiana State’s two conference losses have both come in overtime, two of their wins have been by a total of seven points over Missouri State and Evansville. The Sycamores could easily be 5-0 or 1-4. Are you kidding me?

The Valley Runs Deep. It runs deep into the hearts and minds of its fans. Ten Valley teams are within two games of first place and nine are within one. Are you kidding me, this may be the most entertaining MVC conference season in years.

Do Good

 

Editor: Cover photo of Valpo’s All Wright, courtesy of valpoathletics.com.